Muslima: Muslim Women's Art and Voices Featured at IMOW Exhibition

by Samina Ali, The Huffington Post

As the curator for the International Museum of Women’s new global exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, the one question I’m repeatedly asked is, “What common trait do Muslim women artists and leaders around the world share that strikes you?”

My answer: their courage.

The sad reality is that many of us have grown accustomed to –and comfortable with –seeing Muslim women portrayed as victims.

Yet brave women around the world undertake heroic acts every day. Many do so without anyone bearing witness.

 

From Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian's series "Nil, Nil," included in the International Museum of Women’s online exhibition at muslima.imow.org. Courtesy Shadi Ghadiria and The Huffington Post

To even out that ledger, I want to share the heroic stories of three women I interviewed for Muslima. It’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll see in the upcoming exhibition, which just launched.

Dr. Shirin Ebadi is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. For more than 40 years, Dr. Ebadi has worked to improve the lives of women and children in Iran.

Trained as a lawyer, Dr. Ebadi has represented families of writers and intellectuals who have been killed; she’s exposed conspirators behind an attack by pro-clergy assailants on students at Tehran University; and she’s represented the mother of a nine-year-old girl, Arian Golshani, who was tragically beaten to death by her father and stepmother. In this last case, Dr. Ebadi hoped to change Iranian custody laws that favor fathers over mothers.

Her life’s work to bring justice to victims has led to Dr. Ebadi being jailed, to having her life threatened countless times, and to the confiscation of her Nobel Prize medal by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court.

Undeterred, in 2006, Dr. Ebadi helped forge the Nobel Women’s Initiative to magnify the power and visibility of women working for peace.

Fahima Hashim is part of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. Hashim is the director of Salamah Women’s Resource Center in Sudan, whose most successful campaign has been to reform laws on rape that, in their current form, prevent the survivors of sexual violence from accessing justice. Sudanese laws currently grant conditional immunity to officials, especially police and security forces, many of whom have been accused of rape.

Because of Hashim’s efforts through Salamah, the campaign against rape is becoming a national movement. As a result, Fahima has been interrogated repeatedly by the Sudanese security – one can only believe that it’s with the intention of scaring her into silence. It hasn’t worked.
Maria Bashir, the only female Prosecutor General in Afghanistan, has taken on the mission of educating and empowering the women in her community of Herat. Knowledge about their rights gives women courage, Bashir believes. Doubters have only to look at the numbers to see she’s right. Herat has the highest rate of crimes against women recorded. Why? The knowledge Bashir is imparting is empowering women to file police reports and claim their right to safety and equal treatment.

The sad irony is that while Maria Bashir protects women and children, her own life is under threat from both the local government and the Taliban. Bashir has sent her children out of the country to keep them safe while she moves from safe house to safe house, never stopping her work to advance women’s rights.

My hope is that this exhibition will begin a new discussion about the realities of what it means to be a Muslim woman today. And perhaps, in the process, it might even redefine what it means to be courageous.

Samina Ali is the curator of Muslima: Muslim Women's Arts & Voices, a groundbreaking online exhibition from the International Museum of Women. Ali's debut novel, "Madras on Rainy Days," was awarded the Prix Premier Roman Etranger 2005 Award in France. She is also the founder of Daughters of Hajar, a Muslim American feminist organization. 

Via The Huffington Post

The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces

An Interview with Jennifer Heath, Writer, Activist and Curator

by Valerie Behiery, Islamic Art historian, Ph.D., IAM

"My motivations are complex, even somewhat convoluted, but in a nutshell, I grew up in veiling cultures –both heavily Roman Catholic and Muslim– and thus know from experience that what the West perceives as the whys and wherefores of veiling –primarily oppressive, antiquated customs of the “Other”– are often distorted. I wanted to dispute those notions." (Jennifer Heath)

 

Jennifer Heath is an independent scholar, award-winning cultural journalist, critic, curator, and activist. Her most current exhibitions are “The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces,” which has been touring the United States since 2008 and “Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource,” which began traveling this year. Others include the renowned “Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate.” She is the author of eleven books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Veil: Women Writers on its History, Lore, and Politics and Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women (with Ashraf Zahedi) both published by the University of California Press. Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (with Ashraf Zahedi) is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press, and her collection, The Jewel and the Ember: Love Stories from the Islamic World, is currently under consideration. Future art exhibitions include “The Map is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths-Palestinian, Native American, Irish,” to launch at The Jerusalem Center Gallery in September 2013.

 

The exhibit, The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces, is part of a larger project of yours to unpack the veil which also includes a book. Why did you find it important to address what has become a charged symbol of supposed cross-cultural conflict with both words and images? Tell us also bit about what made you want to address the veil.

 

I love that you say “unpack the veil” – because that is precisely what we’re doing. Unpacking the history and the universality of the veil and veiling practices, so as to bring it to light, engage received wisdom and challenge stereotypes. My motivations are complex, even somewhat convoluted, but in a nutshell, I grew up in veiling cultures –both heavily Roman Catholic and Muslim– and thus know from experience that what the West perceives as the whys and wherefores of veiling –primarily oppressive, antiquated customs of the “Other”– are often distorted. I wanted to dispute those notions. This is also why I wrote The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam. In order to understand the multiple truths inherent in any issue, and speak those truths to power, we must contextualize. The book, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics (University of California Press, 2008) tackled the veil from as many cultural and historical angles as possible –Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, various secular and pagan and pre-Abrahamic points of view, male veiling, mourning, the arts– by writers who approached the topic via personal, political and/or scholarly paths. Having had a visual arts, as well as a literary background, I wanted also to see what artists were thinking and doing. And since I am interested in issues of social and environmental justice, I wanted to combat what I perceive as violations of civil liberties and discrimination against veiling practices, particularly in Europe.

 

They certainly complement and complete each other. In both the book and the show, you emphasize the fact that veiling is not only a Muslim practice as it also exists in the other two Abrahamic faiths as well as in many other cultures. How far does focusing on commonality go in lessening anti-veil discourse which has reached levels of hysteria in certain quarters?

 

Well, we have not yet changed the world, or, say, French laws! But the book and the exhibition have been well-received with many reviews and viewer comments that indicate the projects have been eye-opening, that people did not realize how common, how ancient, how universal veiling really is—and to that end, we hope that viewers and readers can drop their prejudices and look at others more deeply and less fearfully.

 

One of the strongest works for me is in fact the beautiful black and white photograph of a Christian nun by Valari Jack. I have tried without success to find more information on the artist. Could you say a few words on Jack and her striking documenting of Colorado nuns?

 

Valari Jack is a portrait and documentary photographer who lives in Boulder, Colorado and who has been involved in photography for twenty-five years. Her images in the show are part of a black and white series executed using only natural light entitled, Quiet Seasons of Grace: A Year in the Life of the Abbey of St. Walburga. In order to do Valari justice, I would like to cite her lovely artist statement and short bio:

 

“Many years ago, I lived across the road from a community of Benedictine nuns, just outside Boulder, CO. I was fascinated by the sight of a smiling woman wearing a veil and overalls as she drove a tractor over the fields next to a chapel. Within the boundaries of their life as a cloistered religious community and my life as a young mother and aspiring photographer, we got to know each other. I asked if I could photograph their daily lives and with great trust in me, they agreed to let me come with my camera for the Easter rituals. That was the beginning of a defining experience in my life. I spent the next year documenting the seasons of their religious and farming activities. In that year, young women came to test their vocation to monastic life, and stayed or left. Christmas was celebrated. Calves were born in freezing spring snowstorms. The Divine Office was chanted six times a day, every day, in the chapel. The first Mother Superior died at a great age. The Easter Vigil told the story of death and resurrection with a dark chapel transformed by a sequence of candles, newly lit. Young nuns used skateboards to hurry from chapel to the barn. Corn was irrigated in summer heat. All time was sacred and circular and life was eternal. And the veil was worn as a reminder, to both the wearer and the observer, of the choice to live apart from secular life and committed to God.”

 

Valari Jack, “Sister Linda at Vespers,” detail from Seasons of Grace: A Year in the Life of the Abbey of St. Walburga, 1988-89, silver gelatin photograph / Courtesy of Jennifer Heath and IAM

 

Her writing shows the same sensitivity as her art. I also like the fact that an exhibit on the veil, usually a stereotypical sign, is characterized by diversity. It brings together artists using different media and at different stages of their career who, moreover, offer up a variety of perceptions on veiling….

 

Let me say first that I definitely did not want to do a documentary, a sort of National Geographic exhibition. I am not interested in portraying exoticism. Nor was I interested in doing a costume show.

 

Of course, as you and your readers well know, art is more these days than painting and sculpture, so naturally, I looked to various media, each of which has a different mode and effectiveness of expression, equally essential in conveying ideas and information. I can’t really describe my vision except as I tried to earlier, and my guiding instinct is quite completely beyond me. Instinct is really the right word. It’s almost all intuition. And then, of course, I think about whether a particular work is meaningful to the bigger picture I want to describe. My eyes, as they say, are often bigger than my stomach – I tend to want to make large exhibitions, because I can’t stop and I seem to fall in love with so many works!

 

In selecting artwork, I tried to follow more or less the thoughts set forth in the book. But I often went through odd labyrinths to do so. Just for one example, I had a conversation with scholar Margot Badran, which I recorded in my book introduction, wherein Dr. Badran spoke of the Egyptian feminist, Huda Shaarawi’s “first unveiling” on paper meaning writing her memoirs. That brought me to invite the artist Tiffany Besonen to submit her work, i am water, created on translucent dress-pattern paper, featuring a poem by LuAnn Muhm: “I am smoke/when I can be/More often/ I am water/In the shape/of my container.” For me, it all fit together – the contents of the poem itself, the fact of writing, the paper that is also attire-in-waiting.

 

Of course, finding art these days is made relatively easy with the Internet and social media, which spread the word fast. One writer for the book was truly instrumental in spreading the word. Désirée Koslin who wrote the chapter on veiling in medieval Europe and the Early Church also happens to be a visual artist. A retired from teaching at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, she put out the call through Soho20, a woman’s collective in Manhattan with artist members all over the United States.

 

A lot of contemporary artists use the veil in their work including both video and performance artists, like Tulu Bayar and Fatma Charfi, both interesting artists. How do you situate this performative work in the overall exhibit.

Tulu Bayar is a Turkish-American artist, teaching at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. She works primarily, I believe, with photography and video. Confluence is a two-channel magnificent dialogue, reflecting on issues of veiling particularly evident in Turkey (though elsewhere, too). The women in the film trade the headscarf, back and forth, screen to screen, interpreting and reinterpreting the body, the covering, their hair, sacred space. In addition to the cloth, the two women – each confined to her own frame – experiment with a wig. I understand that many observant Turkish women who wish to veil, but in various circumstances are disallowed, have taken to wearing wigs, much in the same spirit as Jewish women of Hasid tradition. Naturally, I also found that element of Confluence appealing – again pointing to commonalities.

 

Tulu Bayar, film still from Confluence, 2005, DVD (Elvira woman veiled and unveiled) / Courtesy of Jennifer Heath and IAM

I first saw Swiss-Tunisian artist Fatma Charfi’s Another Space as live performance in about 2000 and in The Veil it is a looped slide show. The artist affixes to the veils she uses in the performance tiny tissue-paper figurines that she models after a special Tunisian bread-making technique. She calls them Abroucs, a Tunisian term describing someone clever, shy and also ludicrous. They are guides, she says, between the modern and the ancient, faceless, genderless shadows. It is somewhat abstract, yet evokes – to me -- images of brides and fertility, as well as protection and prophecy.

Fatma Charfi, detail from Another Space, 2000 performance (slide show) / Courtesy of Jennifer Heath and IAM

Dressing, costuming, attiring ourselves – even alone before the mirror, even as a private act is performance. We make choices and tell stories consciously or unconsciously in this performance.

 

Yes, I guess it, I mean the performance aspect, is also very much part of all the textile based pieces which I am so glad that you have included as the veil has to be seen as part of a whole textile landscape and aesthetic. Mary Tuma’s Homes for the Disembodied is a really poetic piece that evokes questions of memory and gender.

Mary Tuma is a Palestinian-American artist and Homes for the Disembodied was originally created for a spectacular show called Made in Palestine. She writes that it is “a memorial to and offering for the Palestinian people displaced from Jerusalem who were unable to return to their homes before their deaths.” She made the piece in Jerusalem in 2000 from fifty continuous yards of silk. It is important for her that the dresses are made from a single continuous piece of fabric because it serves as a metaphor for the bond uniting the Palestinians created in part through their shared misfortune. For Tuma, the monumental scale of the dresses is a testament to the strength of the women who she says “must carry on in unjust circumstances, they have little power to change….” while the emptiness refers to how home is part of the imaginary not just geography. Again to quote the artist: “Whether or not she is seen in Jerusalem, she is there, in spirit, veiled.” I put Homes for the Disembodied in the show, because, among other things, it represents another kind of veiling – that of hidden communities, neglected and ignored.

 

Mary Tuma, Homes for the Disembodied, 2006, 50 continuous yards of silk / Courtesy of Jennifer Heath and IAM

Humour is also present in the show from Kate Hamilton’s Flying Burqas to Helen Zughaib’s Abaya Lichtenstein. Do you consider humour in art a good strategy to deflate cross-cultural or intercultural tension?

Absolutely. Think of the comedy tour, “Allah Made Me Funny.” Suddenly, we all become human together, dissolving in laughter…dissolving our differences. I have always thought that the only way to survive is to try to stay as amused as possible, despite the tragedy, and to remember, as the late historian Howard Zinn wrote, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize…will determine our lives.” Humor is a sign of hope. And certainly of compassion and courage and wisdom.

 

Incidentally, I have been invited several times to re-curate smaller versions of The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces but, unfortunately, I was not aware of Kate’s Flying Burqas until after the larger, original show had hit the road. I regret this terribly. She is an extraordinary artist. At least Flying Burqas could be featured in a satellite veil show at Concordia College in Minnesota. I hope I can use her work again somewhere, someday.

Helen Zughaib, “Abaya Lichtenstein,” detail from Secrets Under the ‘Abaya, 2005-2006, gouache on board / Courtesy of Jennifer Heath and IAM

The show has been travelling across the United States since 2008. Has the exhibit been the same in every context or has it also evolved or changed over the years? And how has it been received whether by critics or museum visitors?

It’s exciting to me that the exhibit looks slightly different in each gallery. Some galleries have more flexibility, more space, more equipment – for projecting DVDs, for instance – so installations are varied. One museum painted the walls a ocre-ish yellow for the show. I was stunned – it was dazzling. And I’m always almost as happy to see The Veil each time I’m invited to do a gallery talk as I am to see my children after an absence. But, no, I don’t add to it or take anything away. There’s too much preparation involved – crates, carefully built to fit the work, written materials, wall texts, and so on. It would be impossible to alter it. But that’s a nice part of being privileged to re-curate The Veil. I can feature new additions like Kate Hamilton’s Flying Burqas, and therefore kind of re-contextualize whatever work from the original show that I can repeat (prints, DVDs e.g.).

 

I require that all the galleries make available a viewer comment book and send them to me when the show is over, along with installation images, condition reports and that kind of thing. Forgive the way this sounds, but we have only had two unhappy comments in four years. The show has drawn record viewers, the comments are inevitably happy and grateful, expounding on the exhibition’s beauty and how much the viewers have learned. Naturally, I’m very flattered and relieved and happy about it. I send the comments to all the artists each time we receive them. One artist quipped recently that it was “same old same old high praise.” It’s actually a little alarming, now that I think about it.

 

It will be coming to end soon. How does this feel? Are there particular moments or works that you will remember more than others?

The last show will be at the Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College in New York. The plan was always to go through 2013, though I think we’d all welcome another year or so if opportunities arose. Each work is emblazoned in my memory, I really love and admire them all, and I hope to work again in other capacities with many of the artists. Some of the artists were already friends, and some have become friends, as have some of the curators who took the show. I think when it’s over, I’ll have a raging case of what we used to call post-performance blues.

 

Yes, I understand exactly the feeling you just mentioned and I thank you and all the artists for the exhibit. You always have new curatorial and writing projects on the go. Are you recent exhibition projects related to The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces or are they examining completely different issues?

I have just launched a new international traveling exhibition called Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource, which is comprised entirely of new-media work on DVD. Partly, this is because film “feels” like water – the show is predicated on the fact that water is the most crucial issue of our time – and also because of expenses in shipping – sending 45 disks on the road is much easier in these difficult economic times than shipping eight crates of artwork!

 

I am also working with The Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, D.C., on an exhibition called The Map is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths-Palestinians, Native Americans, Irish. It will be small works on paper, and like The Veil, will grapple with context and commonalities. Such understandings are urgent to me. We can’t change injustice anywhere without seeing the whole picture. These three groups are by no means the only ones who have been oppressed and mistreated, not by a long shot. But these are especially interesting because they have actual relationships to one another, in addition to common histories that have been profoundly meaningful. Jerusalem Fund curator Dagmar Painter and I have put out an artist call and artwork is due to be submitted in January.

 

I thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and time with IAM and we certainly wish you every success.

Valerie, thank you. I so appreciate the chance to prattle about The Veil and about my work in general. It is truly an honor.

Via Islamic Arts Magazine

Taking Risks in Art and Politics

Shirin Neshat: An Artist — Iranian, Muslim and Female — Engages

Image courtesy of Scene in NY

by Aysegul Sert, NYTimes

Over the past two decades, Shirin Neshat has drawn on her personal experience of being an artist at home in the West with roots in Iran to illustrate her creed: “People should be free to choose what they want to do with their lives, what they want to wear, what religion they want to believe in; this is not something a government or a community should impose.”

Perched in her spacious studio in downtown New York, she added: “Globalization is happening, and the world is becoming more homogenous. We have to accept that we are not going to be all the same; we have to tolerate each other’s differences.” 

Born in 1957, Ms. Neshat left Iran before the fall of the shah, settling in New York after a short stay in California. “I will never belong to anywhere completely,” she insisted. “I will never fit in anywhere completely.” Although if Iran were to become democratic, she allowed later in the conversation, “then maybe one day I could go back.” 

Ms. Neshat has exhibited at the Tate in London and the Whitney in New York, and she earned a Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. She first gained attention in the mid-1990s, with “Women of Allah,” a series of photographs depicting women in veils, their skin covered in calligraphy of Islamic poetry. It was a meditation, she said, on the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran — on martyrdom, patriotism and religion. 

That revolution, she asserted, led to many Iranian women becoming “brainwashed and submissive.” In recent years, first with the opposition protests in Iran in 2009 and then with the Arab Spring, “we see a generation of women and men no longer divided but equal. They are educated, they are not ideological, their interest is pure and positive, which is change, democracy and freedom.” 

In 1997, Ms. Neshat moved to video, and to more narrative than simple still portraiture would allow. 

In so doing, “Shirin Neshat has developed a unique aesthetic perspective with the political dimensions of our lives,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, in New York. “She has the ability to translate experiences into art that communicates to the world at large.” 

In 2009, Ms. Neshat won her Silver Lion for best director for her full-length directorial debut, “Women Without Men” — an adaptation of a novel by the Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur that chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953, when a U.S.-led, British-backed coup brought down the elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and reinstalled the shah. 

The film took six years to make, and by the time it was finished, the Green Revolution of 2009 was in full swing in Iran. “That pulled me to being a center for it outside of Iran,” Ms. Neshat said. “I became very outspoken, participating in hunger strikes and trying to help the young prisoners.” 

Subsequently, she said, she felt the urge to return to studio portrait photography and the craftsmanship of calligraphy. The result was “The Book of Kings,” based on the work of the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 A.D. It was just shown at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. 

The actress Natalie Portman, with whom Ms. Neshat recently collaborated on a short film for a project commissioned by the luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, said she detected “a fascinating femininity” to Ms. Neshat’s work, which she had seen before, calling it “strong and rebellious at the same time.” 

Women and political and social turmoil fascinate Ms. Neshat most. “I’m a restless person; I get bored very easily. I’m terrified of artistic stagnation. I like to take risk in my work.” 

Her next project, she said, will be a film on the late Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. 

“I am pulled to the Arab world,” she said. “I feel liberated because I feel like my world has expanded and I’ve gained a new community. Egypt is close to Iran because of its history, its dynamic, its clash between modernity and tradition. For so long I was feeling sorry for myself for being an artist in exile; now I feel like I’m not in exile because Egypt is also somehow my country.” 

Over an hour has passed. Ms. Neshat, glancing at her watch, must move on. But she has one more thing to say. 

“What people are afraid of is not Islam, it is fanaticism,” she said. “Fanaticism is growing everywhere, and it’s not just in Islam,” she added, citing homophobia in the United States. 

And attitudes in Europe? “What Europe is afraid of is not Islam, it’s the way Islam as a religion doesn’t separate itself from political ideology,” she said. “Don’t look at Islam as the only threat. Something is causing a lot of people, especially the uneducated and the poor, to grasp on the notion of fanaticism, and it’s not religion.” She paused one last time. “Religion in a way that does not control private lives is O.K. I am against any community that tries to impose no choice on people. It should always be a matter of personal choice.” 

 Via NYTimes

It’s a Man’s World

Interview with Shurooq Amin, Kuwait’s Rebel with a Cause

Shurooq Amin, My Harem in Heaven, Image courtesy REORIENT

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

On March 5, 2012, just three hours after opening, Shurooq Amin’s highly anticipated exhibition at Kuwait’s AI M. Gallery, It’s a Man’s World, was shut down. Commencing at 8 PM, the exhibition attracted a large number of people, and Amin managed to sell a few pieces, although by 10 PM, the local police stormed the scene, and began questioning both Amin and the gallery owner. Apparently, the authorities had been informed that Amin’s work was of a ‘pornographic’ nature, and as such, could not be shown in Kuwait. As the evening progressed, more and more officials arrived at the galleries, taking pictures of Amin’s paintings to send to the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce. Needless to say, in the end all of Amin’s paintings were taken down, and the exhibition was cancelled.

Although various accounts of the incident exist in both Arab and Western media, I talked to the woman behind the paintings herself, to hear her side of the story. As Amin would say, this is the story heard straight from the horse’s mouth!

What was the basis for the paintings in It’s a Man’s World? The paintings in the series seem to mark quite a departure from your earlier works.

Not really a departure. It’s a Man’s World was preceded by Society Girls, which was a taboo exploration of the private lives of Arab women. It seemed only natural and organic to move to the other half of society – men. With everything that was going on in the world, it occurred to me that our parliament was focusing on trivial, irrelevant issues that had nothing to do with improving the economy, health or education of the country, and everything to do with stripping women of their basic rights. Frankly, I believe (or rather any sociologist will tell you) that the more freedom those in power take away from society, the more hedonistic and corrupt that society would become. I wanted to shed light on this problem.

Shurooq Amin, His Dilemma, Image courtesy REORIENT

In the paintings, for the most part, the male figures are faceless. What is this intended to signify?

In almost all of my artworks, the men are faceless. There is a practical logical reason for this, and another metaphorical reason. The former is that the men are real men from society – they’re not models. When I do the photo shoot, their faces are exposed, but I ask them to sign a confidentiality agreement to protect their identity and subsequent safety, and proceed to cover their faces. The latter reason is of course, to symbolize the hypocrisy that is inbred in our society. We are brought up and raised in this part of the world to be hypocritical. Men in power seldom practice what they preach. I’m all for living and letting live, but I can’t stand it when someone in power restricts a woman’s basic lifestyle on the basis of religious codes of conduct, when that person himself does not adhere to those codes. I’m simply putting it out there, exposing it, and forcing people to discuss taboo topics. Cultural progress cannot take place without an open sociopolitical dialogue between people.

Just three hours after the exhibition opened, it was shut down. Did you ever anticipate that such a thing would happen before the paintings were shown?

No, never. I expected some controversy, but what happened to me was outrageous; even the manner in which it happened was extremely vulgar, and totally illegal. They shut down my show, treated me like a criminal, banned my paintings from being shown in Kuwait, and came back the next day to confiscate them (luckily we had moved them to a safe location in the middle of the night). I’ve heard many rumors about the incident. For example, some people said I had planned the whole thing (which simply is a reflection of their own twisted minds), while others said that I must have anticipated the consequences because in an interview with Bazaar magazine, I had admitted that the artworks were controversial (well, so was Society Girls – so what?), and so on. It’s rather amusing reading about all the stories out there.

I can’t stand it when someone in power restricts a woman’s basic lifestyle on the basis of religious codes of conduct, when that person himself does not adhere to those codes - Shurooq Amin

Was the story covered in the Kuwaiti media? If so, what was the general stance towards you and your work?

Yes. The story was covered in the Kuwaiti media every day for the next 2 to 3 weeks on television, and in newspapers and magazines. My phone hardly stopped ringing. It became very disconcerting for me – overwhelming in a bad way. Most of the time I refused to give interviews, and still stories would come out in the paper, with falsified details!

As a result, I became very wary of the Arabic media, especially after the MBC fiasco. MBC invited me to Beirut to appear on their show, Kalam Nawaem. They sent me a ticket and hotel voucher, a TV crew to my studio in Kuwait to film, and they spoke to a lawyer on my side and an opposition member against me. They were very thorough. Subsequently, I arrived in Beirut and was told that they received a phone call from Kuwait ordering them to stop me from talking on air. That was devastating. When I was approached by Rotana, I decided I wouldn’t put myself through that again. However, the Western media was far more professional. Reuters, Arabian Business, and the Financial Times wrote excellent articles about me and the incident. In Kuwait, the general stance was supportive, but those who were against me were very hurtful and personal. On the other hand, the support I received from the international community was overwhelmingly good.

Although the exhibition was prematurely closed, the controversy you stirred gained you quite a bit of attention. What impact would you say all this publicity has had on your career as an artist?

The publicity I received was excellent for my career as an artist, because everyone wanted to see what all the fuss was about; and what they saw, they inevitably liked. My website used to get hundreds of hits a day, and now it gets thousands. The artworks are – at the end of the day – aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The subject matter – which is quite ‘heavy’ and serious – is dealt with in a very tongue-in- cheek, light-hearted manner … and I think that’s the secret to its success. I think people are fed up of seeing life reflected in art in a gruesome, gory, or depressing manner. My way is imposing a grueling vision comically and beautifully. It’s something you can hang in your home, ultimately. The energy of the work itself is positive. The universe is on my side. I’m sure whoever wanted to shut me up had no idea about how this would backfire on them. I’ve had offers from museums and galleries across the world. The International Art Critics Association have even sent letters to the Amir of Kuwait, to the National Council, and to the Kuwait Arts Association complaining about the incident and its impact on freedom of expression in the arts. I can’t thank them enough.

I have a mission, and I will carry it out – nothing will stand in my way. It’s that simple - Shurooq Amin

How has the incident affected your personal and professional life? In a relatively conservative country such as Kuwait, have you ever feared for your personal safety? What has been the impact on your role as a University professor?

I had even received a couple of death threats when I did Society Girls! In fact, a couple of men stormed into the exhibition demanding to ‘see the witch’ – I mean, really? Are we living in the dark ages? Would they like to burn me at the stake just because I’m strong-willed and won’t give up on what’s right? Or is it my power they’re afraid of? One film director asked to meet with me just to meet ‘the woman whose 17 paintings shook a nation’.

Look, I’ve never worried about my safety (how can you even drive your car if you worry?), despite being a single mother of four. I don’t want my children growing up in fear. My children are learning – just by observing my life – that no matter what life throws at you, you must never give up on your dreams, values, beliefs, or passions. If you talk to my friends, they will tell you I’m fearless. I have a mission, and I will carry it out – nothing will stand in my way. It’s that simple. At University, my students all asked me about the incident, as they had also heard mixed reports about it. They’re lucky in that they got a firsthand report straight from the horse’s mouth. It made for an excellent discussion on art, politics and sociology. I believe they learned more from that one incident than they did the whole semester.

Shurooq Amin, Diwanya High, Image courtesy REORIENT

Your works from the same series have also been exhibited at the Lahd Gallery (presumably their London branch). What was the reception like over there?

When Lahd Gallery approached me to do a solo show at their London gallery, I was thrilled. I’ve always wanted to exhibit in London. That had been a dream of mine. The series that I showed there was called The Bullet Series, which was under the umbrella of Society Girls. What made The Bullet Series unique was that the paintings were shot with an M16 rifle using a Hornet bullet, which left a clean hole through the canvas. The reception was incredible. I was still a relatively unknown artist there and yet the feedback was astounding. Lahd Gallery still have two or three of my paintings there, I believe.

Are there any plans in the near future to hold more exhibitions in the Arab world? If so, would you ever consider showing the paintings from the It’s a Man’s World series again?

Yes I would definitely hold more exhibitions in the Arab world, and my focus would be Dubai. In fact, I’m preparing the next series as we speak. As for showing the It’s a Man’s World series, that would be impossible for one reason: most of the paintings have been sold. I have four left with me in my studio. That’s it. However, I am collaborating with Ayyam Gallery, the foremost gallery in the Middle East, to produce limited edition prints of some works from It’s a Man’s World and Society Girls. These can be purchased directly from Ayyam Gallery in Dubai. I had never been warm to the idea of prints, because my paintings have a lot of texture and detail, which I thought might not show up on print. Also, as each painting takes so much time, effort, and money to produce, and is totally unique, I – very naively – refused the idea of prints. However, I soon learned that for one, prints are only offered to artists whose work is in demand, and secondly, prints raise the value of the original artwork for its owner. Knowing that, I thought, ‘let there be prints!’

In the Middle East, many subjects – such as the ones you explored recently in your paintings – are still taboo. What do you think the future holds in store for the region’s artists in terms of how freely they can express themselves?

If they rally up behind me, I can assure you they will be able to express themselves freely. The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades!

 Shurooq Amin, Image courtesy REORIENT

Joobin Bekhrad is the Founder and Editor of REORIENT, and the Co-Founder of art clvb 

Via REORIENT

Reversing the Stereotypes

by Roxane Zand, Sotheby's

As a student I was a great fan of Edward Said’s Orientalism and used to feel offended by the vague, notional stereotypes that the West held about Middle Easterners. That sensitivity has been turned on its head in recent times with Middle Eastern artists ready to invert the very elements and aspects that used to caused offence.

Take Shirin Neshat’s series of Stills from her film Women Without Men. The other day I was arrested by a print from the series hanging on the ground floor at Sotheby’s New Bond Street. Zarin, the subject of the film, lies crumpled in the foetal position, her anguish contrasted and witnessed so poignantly by the Western icons that surround her.

Shirin Neshat’s Zarin in Bedroom, a still from her celebrated film Women Without Men. Sold for £17,500 in the Contemporary Art Day sale in London on 27 June. Image courtesy of Sotheby's

Her exotic-looking bedroom could be a Moroccan or even Ottoman brothel, although it actually references Tehran’s seamy ‘shahr-I naw.’ While the images of Elvis Presley and Deborah Kerr evoke so many layers of meaning!

For those of us who remember the smoke-filled cinemas of Tehran or Cairo or Baghdad, these actors were not brands the way film stars are today, but larger-than-life characters that symbolized the golden era of Hollywood. I simply love what Shirin has achieved in this series, and totally covet the one that hangs in the study of my good friend Layla Diba in NYC. Just the other day Susanne, another friend who collects Iranian art, showed me the image of her latest acquisition and yes, it was one of these and yes, I felt a pang of envy!

This morning I call up Shirin who, amazing and dear friend that she is, was willing to talk about her work despite being in Paris for the opening of Iranian Arts Now and having just learned that her mother is ill in hospital in Iran. Of course, my first prayer is for her mother’s recovery. She kindly took the time to tell me how in this series she deliberately took the clichéd Orientalist image of a voluptuous woman and injected the dark suffering of Zarin’s anorexia. A space associated with extreme pleasure becomes transformed into an ambience of extreme pain. And therein lies the artist’s ability to have the final word: she makes nonsense of the cliché of Oriental exoticism. Edward Said rests in peace.

A detail of Shirin Neshat’s Zarin in Bedroom. Image courtesy of Sotheby's

Images of Elvis Presley and Deborah Kerr hang on the wallls of the bedroom. Image courtesy of Sotheby's

Shirin Neshat’s Zarin in Bedroom hanging in the New Bond Street galleries. Image courtesy of Sotheby's

Via Sotheby's

'The Other Resurrection': Storytelling through images

The exhibition The Other Resurrection runs until May 30 at Contemporary Art Platform (CAP), Kuwait. This stunning photography exhibition gives a chance to explore the work of the Middle East’s best photographers. They take you on a journey with their poignant images and their visual stories are powerful, haunting and heart wrenching to say the least. In the current exhibition, 40 outstanding images have been selected from the works of six distinguished female photographers, each with her own process, technique and source of inspiration. The featured photographers are:  Laura Boushnak(Palestine), Myriam Abdelaziz (Egypt), Tamara Abdul Hadi (Iraq), Tanya Habjouqa (Jordan), Dalia Khamissy (Lebanon) and Newsha Tavakolian (Iran).

‘Rawiya’ is an Arabic word, which when translated means, “She who tells a story”.  The collective comprises of a group of six female photographers from across the Middle East and made its official debut at the Format Festival in Derby, UK, in March 2011.

Speaking through images, when words fail, these photographers from the Middle East attempt the return to a past that no longer exists and the departure into a future that remains unknown. In their very own words, “They present an insider’s view of a region in flux, balancing its contradictions while reflecting on social and political issues and stereotypes.”

With an artist’s eye, they eloquently capture their visual stories that offer representations against and beyond the stereotypes. The images reflect their diverse perceptions as they successfully explore issues of identity crises, sexual awakening, the literacy crisis and the unconventional graffiti and street art in Egypt and provide insight on the struggles, triumphs, and aspirations.

These women are not only truly remarkable photographers, but their dedication to chronicle the known and the unknown, the forgotten and the oblivious, is commendable.

Laura Boushnak is a Palestinian photographer born in Kuwait. Her work ranges from conflict photography to experimental storytelling. Boushnak firmly believes that women can only be empowered by literacy. She is noted for her comprehensive and impassioned series, I Read, I Write, which focuses on women in Egypt, a country the UN ranks as one of the ten worst in the world in terms of illiteracy. “In this series of portraits, women attending literacy classes in Cairo were invited to participate in the project by writing their own words on prints of the photographs and tell their own stories.”

"I Read, I Write" photo series by Laura Boushnak, Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

“Their words explore the barriers that have blocked their aspirations, such as poverty, gender-related disadvantages, early marriage and cultural constraints,” says Boushnak, “Many women in the Arab world are denied education and thus deprived of the opportunity to grow and reach their full potential, which impedes the region’s progress,” she states.

Boushnak’s work has been published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The National Geographic and Le Monde.

As a writer and photographer, Tanya Habjouqa utilizes anthropology as her guide to storytelling in her journey through lens. She was born in Jordan and educated in the US, receiving her masters in Global Media and Middle East Politics from the University of London, The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Habjouqa is known for gaining unique access to sensitive gender, social and human rights stories in the Middle East. To see a Habjouqa image is to peel timeless metaphors of life, love, loss and a strong will to survive the odds.

"Women of Gaza" by Tanya Habjouqa. Young women exercise in gym, part of the women's associations with strong religious connections becoming increasingly predominant across Gaza. Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

Recently, she began documenting the everyday lives of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip. In her images, Habjouqa expresses an enduring message of hope in the face of adversity. “As a storyteller, I am drawn to the contradictions prevalent within the diversity of Middle Eastern culture(s).” Her series Women of Gaza is an eye catching commentary on a different side of Gaza.

“Despite the devastation, a community spirit and elegance prevails. Life continues, and so do the traditions and self-respect—a resistance to letting suffering be the standard definition. Women are continuing to care for their families, strive for education, and pursue careers against the odds.”

Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian began working at the tender age of 16 for a number of reformist dailies, all since banned.  By the time she hit 21, she was working internationally, covering wars, natural disasters and social documentary stories in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen. Women’s issues are a predominant theme of Newsha’s work.

Photograph by Newsha Tavakolian, Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

The complex social and political issues in the Middle East are deftly captured by Lebanese Dalia Khamissy. She dwells especially on the aftermath of wars and their effect on people. Khamissy’s work evokes stillness and solitude. “I usually work on stories that touch me directly or indirectly and they are mostly people I relate to who are suffering and I wonder why people have to endure that,” says Khamissy.

While elaborating further, she says, “I feel a bit of inner anger, questions and frustrations and then comes the need to investigate those stories and try to understand. By listening to my subjects telling their stories, I make them comfortable and wanting to share more and this is the first step to building trust.”

“I share a lot of respect for people who open their spaces and accept me in to tell their stories and respecting people is the main key,” she says, adding further,” I always think that the simplest frame can be the most interesting one. I think the subject I am photographing is already very interesting and I do not need to make special efforts to make a very interesting frame. It is there in front of me, I just have to grab the camera and frame what my eyes see,” she adds.

"Missing" by Dalia Khamissy, Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

Through images brimming with emotion, Khamissy in her Missing series explores “how those left behind approach the task of grieving and remembrance when there are no bodies to mourn, nor even verification of a death to which they could appeal to for closure.” The faces in the photographs, invite quiet contemplation of the human tragedy.

On the other hand, a portrait series titled Picture an Arab Man is another remarkable work by Iraqi Canadian photojournalist Tamara Abdul Hadi.

“The conceptual aim of this portrait series is two-fold: trying to uncover and break the stereotypes placed upon the Arab male, and providing an alternative visual representation of that identity. Secondly, it is a celebration of their sensual beauty, an unexplored aspect of the identity of the contemporary Arab man, on the cusp of change in a society that reveres an outdated form of hyper-masculinity,” explains Abdul Hadi.

"Picture an Arab Man" series by Tamara Abdul Hadi, Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

“Through Picture an Arab Man; I strive to do what I can to redefine the image of the Arab man for an audience so accustomed to one-dimensional stereotypes… Most importantly, I hope to properly represent my subjects as diverse and candid men whose only thing in common is their rich Middle Eastern heritage,” she stresses.

“No matter who I am photographing, I try my best to make sure that they feel comfortable, whether they are in their own surroundings or not. Respect is the key factor, and staying true to the subject you are documenting is just as important,” she adds.

Abdul Hadi began her first job working as a photographer and photo editor at Reuters News Agency and later for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. She has also initiated and taught photography workshops in Lebanon and Palestine, with the goal of giving empowerment to women and children through the creative arts.

Myriam Abdelaziz is a French photographer of Egyptian origins and was born in Cairo. A 2006 graduate of the International Centre of Photography, New York, Abdelaziz takes delight in telling stories through documentaries and portraitures, set in the Middle East and Africa. Her photographic series Writing on the Walls: Transition tugs at your heart.

"Writing on the Walls: Transition" by Myriam Abdelaziz. Photograph titled 'The Martyr'. During the transition government that started on Feb. 11th 2011 in Egypt, when President Moubarak stepped down, Grafitis denouncing the actions of the Army in power started spreading all over the city. Soon anti-Revolutionaries joined by trying to express their own opinon on top of the existing grafitis. Image courtesy of Rawiya Collective

Abdelaziz’s advice to our readers regarding photography is to “look at the images with your heart not with your eyes. It is about a genuine connection, the camera is just here to capture an instant where the subject is himself,” she notes.

“It is inspiring and motivating that some of the galleries based in Europe as well as US that have extended a hand to us are keen to bring something fresh and different from the region. One gallery tied to a university in Georgia (USA) specifically said they saw bringing our work as an educational opportunity for students to gain new insight into Middle East,” Habjouqa adds.

“We want to profile not only our social issues with nuance but to also celebrate the humor and tradition of our region often ignored,” reiterates Habjouqa.

Their approaches to the untold stories elicit mixed feelings of nostalgia and pain. “Through Rawiya we want to tell the stories of our societies that were not being told, because they were not in ‘the hot news’, although they are as important, if not more important, than the rest,” explains Khamissy.

“I think that photographers tend to forget that the most important is the subject and his story and not the photographer and his glory. Once that is remembered, the photographs would really come out very genuine,” stresses Khamissy.

As for the future, they add in unison, Rawiya will keep sharing stories from this region and beyond.

“We would like to become one of the reference points in the region- for photographers, journalists, artists, and people with an interest in Middle East in general… To be known for pushing social boundaries and bringing forth a different perspective often missing from Middle Eastern narratives.” and that indeed sums up the essence of Rawiya Collective.

Editor:  Deepa Pant

Via Khaleejesque

Feminism Manifested in Art

By Roxana Marcoci

To speak about the feminist epistemes of the year 2000, one needs to look back at the decade of the 1990s, a period when feminist practices related to visual and performing arts, theory, criticism, and activism became more dissenting and schismatic than ever before. While the pioneering Women's Liberation Movement of the early 1970s had a clear mandate -the construction of a distinct female subjectivity and the inclusion of women within the orb of cultural production-, modified ensuing generations to calibrate a clearly articulated oppositionality between "grass roots" and poststructuralist theories of gender, more recent feminist investigations have ceased to operate by any such clear-cut demarcations. In other words, since the end of the 20th-century two aspects have been problematized: the received categories of feminist art, and the idea that "woman" can be literalized in terms of a normative collective identity, a gestalt of some sorts. This being said, one should not hastily conclude that feminism, now fractioned and divergent, is bankrupt or in reflux. On the contrary, I would argue, that if contemporary feminists have less of a sense of themselves as a movement, it is because their power subsists no longer in a unified Pan-feminist voice, but in the disjunctions among their voices, in the differences among women themselves1. 

It is through this prismatic lens that I would like to focus, even if briefly, on three different practices which have contributed to understanding our period and concurrently have extended the social contexts in which these practices still unfold. 

Shirin Neshat - Turbulent

To begin with, nineties feminism not only jettisoned gynophobic stereotyping, but also probed sexual, ethnic and racial differences. This explains why, on one hand, feminism today is more likely to address all the clichés about what it means to be a woman -since as a construct (whether historical or fictional), woman is always open to investigation. On the other hand, it offers a much broader range of positions, not to mention realignments, as in the challenge posed by women of color to the authority of white women to speak for all women in general2. The sustained productions of the last twenty years of Adrian Piper, Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson are just few of the known paradigms. The same can be said about non-Western feminist rebuttals of Western hegemonic discourses.

Consider, for instance, the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work is feminist, yet inverts all generalizations about the identity of women in Islamic societies. Her work, comprised of still photographs with calligraphic inscriptions and experimental video short texts, disclaims systems of representations that carry with them a kind of coercive authority, opaque to interventions on the part of those represented3. Neshat is interested to open up the narratives she explores, to portray the ambivalent, often contradictory roles that women perform in Iran. Her series of photographs such as Unveiling, 1993, and Women of Allah, 1994, focus on the topic of the veil in relation to the female body, and on the dynamic between femininity and violence subsumed in the image of the Muslim woman as militant. In the first series, the woman dressed from head to ankle in traditional black chador (a garment that fully covers the body except for face, hands and feet) is to Westerners' eyes an image of religious Fundamentalism; yet, to the women of Islam it is an image reflecting cultural difference. The woman wearing the chador, like the veiled woman, stands for the body politic honoring Islamic laws. This public image, however, is doubled by the private body "empowered by the sense of multiplication and anonymity that her veiling offers." 4 Concealing the woman's sexuality, these garments not only prevent her from becoming an object of scopophilic desire, but also subvert the masculine drive to fix her in a stable and stabilizing position. Or, to state it differently, it is precisely the woman's anonymity which enfranchises her to assume an infinite number of shapes and identities. In the second series, the woman's body appears inscribed by feminist poems in Farsi, the Persian language of Iran, and armed with a menacing pistol pointed to the viewer. Once again, Neshat introduces a cultural paradox: the always-already submissive Muslim woman takes on the role of the free-shooter, an equal to her male counterparts in the military, in the revolution and in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Issues of violence and terrorism are thus deployed in relation to feminism, politics, and religion. 

Similarly, more recent video installations suchlike Turbulent, 1998, communicate a degree of ambiguity between a particular feminism rooted in Islamic values, and Western misconceptions about the passivity of Middle-Eastern women, who are said to lack a voice of their own. The artist introduces two protagonists, a man and a woman, two singers, facing the viewer's space from opposite sides. The man performs a classical love song before an appreciative all-male audience. The woman performs (which is strictly forbidden in Iran) to an empty concert hall. The gendered space of the two confronting voices is complicated by the underlying tension between tradition and iconoclasm as distinct modes of production available to men and women respectively. While the man lip-synchs (the actual voice is of a popular Kurdish singer) a classical song by the renowned Iranian composer Kambiz Roshan Ravan, the woman sings a rapturous, self-invented chant, her electrifying voice enhanced by computer-sampling and asynchronization. Throughout the duration of the piece, the camera fixes the man frontally in a static position, but roves freely around the woman in a hypnotic whirl. Paul D. Miller notes that the man, free to act, "is bound to repeat what is known and identifiable within the given musical traditions of his culture, whereas the woman, driven by a history of prohibition, is compelled to invent a form which expresses, explodes, and reconfigures sound in a visceral stream of abstract and universal potential."5 The work goes from addressing key issues about Middle-Eastern relations battled out on the phonetic field to making a statement about women's transgressive power in a world of culturally inscribed limitations.  

Current feminism is likely to unscreen various incongruities among women, including not just differences of culture, race and ethnicity, but also of sexual identity. This explains the recent emergence of lesbian content in art, as seen through the lens of Nicole Eisenman, Nan Goldin, Laura Aguilar, Catherine Opie, Collier Schorr and Zoe Leonard, to name just a few. Zoe Leonard, whose work I would like to examine in this context, is one of the founders of the lesbian feminist group Fierce Pussy, an organization engaged in political activism, street interventions and mural painting. As a member of the artist collective Gang, the artist produced in 1992 a poster titled Read My Lips, in which a woman's vagina is coupled with the phrase: "Read my lips before they are sealed." The text directly references a law prohibiting American doctors to use the word "abortion." At the same time, it alludes to the censorship of homoerotic subjects. The scope of the piece is to establish an analogy between the conservative patriarchal models of political order (what Lacan calls the pere version, i.e. the version of the father, otherwise known as perversion) and the annihilation of the female body whose self-actualization owed a great deal to the 1960s sexual revolution and to the widespread use of the contraceptive pill. Also, the fact that it is a lesbian feminist who had the initiative of placing the vagina at the center of the picture, entangles matters even more, raising further questions about the judicial and institutional praxis which governs, controls and litigates the female body.

The woman's genitalia became the topos of Leonard's critique of male sexist power-play. So, in 1992, on the occasion of Documenta IX, the artist decided to shatter the hegemony of patriarchal lawgivers by installing in the Neue Galerie, Staatliche Museen Kassel, a series of scandalizing black-and-white photographs of female pubes amid moralistic 18th-century German paintings. Addressing the familiar critique of painting in terms of the "male gaze," Leonard redirected the viewer's attention from that which the paintings merely hinted at to that which was subliminally hidden beneath them. Her close-up photographs of female genitalia directly pointed to the modern history of art as underwritten by the "fathers," beginning with Gustave Courbet's Origin of the World, 1866, and ending up with Marcel Duchamp's Given, 1946-1966, key works construing the female sexual organ as original site. Original site of what? of becoming? of originality? of masculine desire? of specularity? All these questions interfacing each other only had the result of recreating the primal scene as a peepshow spectacle.

In Courbet's case, the work had been commissioned by a notorious Turkish collector of erotica, Khalil Bey, for his own delectation, if not for that of his confreres who, during the course of an Oriental soirée would be shown the "nude woman, without feet and without a head"6 following dinner -one can only guess- as desert. The work would be admired on grounds of its original composition and masterful depiction of the flesh. It is known, however, that by 1910 the Origin had changed owners. The Baron Francis Hatvany of Budapest bought the painting from the dealer Bernheim-Jeune, who is said to have kept it in a double-locked frame, hidden by a panel of a "castle in the snow." 7 By a twist of fate, the work eventually ended up in the collection of Sylvie Bataille Lacan -former wife of both Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan- before becoming a highlight in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. From a Lacanian point of view, this is a classic scenario: a common image -the cunt- becomes the object-cause of desire because it is converted into a screen onto which the male subject projects the fantasies that support his orgasmic desire (jouissance).

In the case of Given, Duchamp's testament-work, the viewer is invited to peek like a voyeur through a peephole into a diorama revealing the headless nude torso of a woman in a landscape, her legs spread over to reveal, once again, the cunt. Like in Courbet's Origin, the image of the female sex functions here as an empty form, filled out by masculine fantasy. In both cases, patriarchal prerogative and pictorial originality (e.g. bravura of brushwork, manipulation of matter, composition thought in terms of the gaze) are interlocked. In contrast, Leonard's photo-verité shots of female pubes are almost too present, too real and too banal, revealing the cunt "as the incarnated, materialized emptiness." 8 Smeared by an obscure vitality belonging to the real, the cunt stands no longer for the empty signifier ready to be filled with male jouissance, but for a lawless form penetrated itself with enjoyment. As such, Leonard's appropriation of the modern masters and her invasion in the gallery of old masters' representations of women constitutes a violation of parental authority and jurisdiction over the only possible origin, the woman's sex, that void which stands for the whole without ever closing itself as totality. In the end, one realizes that Leonard's practice is less one of appropriation, or territorialization -i.e. taking hold of the space of old masters' works- and more one of expropriation: she expropriates the male appropriators, thus reclaiming the power of the creative act on her own terms.

In a similar vein, Janine Antoni has produced throughout the 1990s a body of work which evinces a liberating revision of male art and a broad understanding of feminist artistic strategies. Her sculptures made of chocolate, fat, or soap are, on a first-level reading, products associated with feminine obsessions concerning eating habits and carvings, struggle with bulimia, the desire for love and cleanliness, guilt feelings, and the drive of self-hatred. In Gnaws, 1992, Antoni "re-sculpted" two Minimalist cubes of lard and chocolate, each weighing 600 pounds, by chewing and spitting out their corners. From the spewed mass of chocolate, the artist then produced the interior plastic tray of a heart-shaped box of candies; from the lard mixed with pigment and beeswax, a collection of 300 lipsticks. Antoni applied a similar sculptural process in Lick and Leather, 1993-94, a group of soap and chocolate self-portraits which were gradually worn away by narcissistic licking and compulsive washing of her own features. 

According to the artist, the bite, like the licking, is a process "both intimate and destructive,"9 insofar as it implies a close, intimate relation to one's body, but also an aggressive, oral-sadistic tendency. Thus, on a second reading, one could argue that the performative practices conjured up in Antoni's works are related to a pre-Oedipal oral fixation which recalls Louise Bourgeois' fantasy of dismembering her father's body in a well-known installation from 1974,

The Destruction of the Father. This is a piece in which the social ritual of the family meal is turned into a cannibalistic attack on the father's power, his words, through biting. As noted by Mignon Nixon, Bourgeois' act of devouring her father's body is one and the same with the act of eating his words. She writes: "... eating takes place of naming in a substitution of oral sadism for speech that is at once Kleinian and anti-Lacanian. The little girl's desire to speak and her frustration of being silenced is transposed into another desire for oral power and pleasure -the desire to bite, to cut, to devour the one who oppresses with his speech.10 Thus, in Antoni's Gnaws the rows of teeth marks indented on the surface of the chocolate cube and the impressions of her chin, nose and mouth left on the lard, constitute an attack on the male-oriented Minimalism legacy which at once defines her as an artist and excludes her as a woman. The desire to eat the father and to eat his words is turned into the desire for new sculptural solutions which involve performance as an aggressive act with the intention of producing works -lipstick and candy- that comment on the manipulation of women's desires in advertising industry and consumer culture.

In 1992 Antoni performed Loving Care at Anthony d'Offay Gallery in London, a piece which stands for one of her most witty critiques of the aggrandized Abstract Expressionist gesture and the male action painting paradigm. Soaking her long hair in dye, she used it as a brush to mop the gallery floor, combining cleaning and painting into a single action. The performance is not without irony. As Amelia Jones observes, Antoni subverted "the usual outcome of the laborious act of mopping by making the floor dirty rather than clean." 11 In other words, her "painting" became a reverse action since the floor literally had to be mopped once the performance ended. The impact of Loving Care consists in the intersection between Pollockian drip painting and laboring female body. By making contact with the floor, Antoni evinced the debasement and self-abnegation of the female body at work in antithesis to the Pollockian gesture, which although performed on the floor, always maintains a distance from the web of paint.

The distance intimated by Pollock became a full statement in Yves Kleins' Anthropométries, 1960, a series of performances in which the artist "painted" by employing the naked bodies of female models (dubbed the "living brushes"), smeared with International Klein Blue while he kept his own body free of paint altogether. Klein's argument that the male creator directs his energies and materials from a distance, constitutes one of the most triumphantly misogynistic messages in the history of 20th-century art: "I no longer dirtied myself with color, not even the tips of my fingers." 12 As opposed to Pollock and Klein, Antoni's gesture is not linked to a transcendentalized concept of work but to the "low" economy of domestic labor. Her rationale brings to mind Shigeko Kubota's performance, Vagina Painting, presented in 1965 at the Perpetual Fluxfest in New York. On that occasion, Kubota similarly proceeded to paint red strokes on the floor with a brush attached to her underwear. Redefining gesture painting according to the codes of female anatomy and bodily fluids, she produced a gestural image that activated the vagina itself "as the originary point of the meaningful painterly gesture." 13 Like Kubota, Antoni, next to Leonard and Neshat, have each made a gesture toward the "unbearable lightness of being." Indeed, they have each produced an "easy" piece that recovers woman as the source of artistic practice, not to mention as the gender able to produce both life and art.

<sup>1. For a solid analysis of this issue see Laura Cottingham, "The Feminist Continuum: Art After 1970," in The Power of Feminist Art, ed. by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 276-287.
2. In the late 1980s a number of feminist organizations for women of color emerged in the United States, among them: Coast to Coast (African-American artists ), Vistas Latinas, and Godzilla (Asian-American artists).
3. For an informed discussion of this issue see Phil Mariani and Jonathan Crary, "In the Shadow of the West: An Interview with Edward Said," in Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture edited by Russell Ferguson, William Olander, Marcia Tucker and Karen Fiss (Cambridge and New York: 4.The MIT Press and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990), 93-103. 4 Paul D. Miller, "Motion Capture: Shirin Neshat's Turbulent," Parkett 54 (1998-1999), 160.
5. Ibid, 159.
6. For an excellent discussion of the history of this work see Linda Nochlin, "The Origin without an Original," October 37 (Summer 1986): 80.
7. Ibid, 80.
8. See Slavoj Zizek's, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1991), 145.
9. Janine Antoni, quoted by Rosa Martinez in Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1998), 61.
10. Mignon Nixon, "Bad Enough Mother," October 71 (Winter, 1995): 74.
11. Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 281.
12. Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 122.
13. Ibid, 99.</sup> 

" Contemporary feminists' power subsists in the differences among women themselves. "

First published at: First published at ICCA
Via IranDokht